Television sets have increased in popularity to become an integral part of home entertainment culture. And as the technology put into televisions have become more advanced, the user experience has correspondingly evolved. Users can not only utilize the modern television for viewing broadcast programs, but also connect to the internet to view online content.
The purpose of continuing to include new technologies into the television is to provide a better user experience. Similarly, advances in television technology have allowed users to no longer be limited to controlling the television by pushing keys on a remote control. While the remote controller concept still serves an important function, Instead, a variety of different gestures may be made by the user that can be recognized by the television as a control command. One such gesture is a voice command spoken by the user to control certain features of the television.
However, one major deficiency of previous voice recognition systems has been the placement of the actual voice recognition unit on an offsite server instead of within the circuitry of the television itself. This setup can be seen in FIG. 1. When a voice input is received by a television 100, the voice input must be transmitted via a network 105 to a voice recognition unit located on an external server 110. Then the voice recognition unit will process the voice input to determine whether the voice input can be recognized as a known voice command. The resulting determination of a recognized voice command must then be transmitted back to the television 100 via the network 105. So in such a setup, the ability of a user to make voice input commands and have the television recognize the user's voice input command is severely limited by the need to communicate with an offsite server that stores the voice recognition unit.
Therefore it follows that there exists a need to develop a television that is able to easily and efficiently recognize a user's voice command and control features of the television accordingly.